24 Jul 15 01:11, you wrote to me:

 ml>> you are thinking of FD and friends... they are File Attach mailers
 ml>> and they pack netmail messages in their netmail area on their own...
 ml>> binkd and friends cannot do that because they do not have any idea
 ml>> what a netmail area is... binkd and friends rely on the tosser to do
 ml>> the same job that FA mailers spoiled us with... the truth is that FA
 ml>> mailers do perform some tossing and scanning functions like a tosser
 ml>> but they are limited strictly to netmail in only one netmail area...

 MB> I never was really fond of arcmailattach because to cluttered my
 MB> netmail area. :-)

you fell into the same misunderstanding that many others also fell into...
i did for a long time, as well... then i wised up one day when i was
rereading some mailer and tosser documentation... the key is that the
mailer's and tosser's netmail areas are shared between them but the sysop's
netmail area should be elsewhere to keep his mail from being mixed in with
that being managed by the mailer and tosser... whether the sysop's netmail
area is another MSG area or some other message base format doesn't matter
as long as the tosser can import/export netmails to/from it to the software
managed netmail area used by the mailer and tosser... it may be that the
sysop would place their netmail in the same area as their BBS users'
netmail instead of their own private area... the thing is that it all comes
down to how things are configured...

 MB> The only thing I did not like about BSO is that it sometimes left
 MB> trash (zero byte files) laying around - especially for removed links.

not sure what files you are talking about but if they are/were mail
bundles, they are left as zero bytes so the tosser can see that they've
been sent and can increment the extension... using a zero byte file on the
drive keeps the tosser from having to manage some sort of database with
this information...

 MB> Nothing that was functionally wrong just felt dirty on system with
 MB> many links.

it is SOP with AM/FA mailers ;)

 MB> Filebox (with LFNs) is far better because one can simply
 MB> drop files into a directory whether system is busy or not.

true to a point... that point being that interfacing with hybrid systems
using both BSO and AM/FA mailers is somewhat more complicated...

 MB> A mailer can be made aware to send mail first, the archives, and
 MB> lastly .TIC files (so as not to trip bad tic).

most mailers do this after learning the hard lessons over the years ;)

 MB> If a developer wanted to get really creative could read tic files to
 MB> see which archive/tic pair should be sent.

true but that's a little much... just send the mail first, then the files
and finally the tics... there can be no problems with that ordering... or
am i/we missing something else?

 MB> Also made scripting one's own support for FTP driven fido way easier!

there is that... i do similar with my frontdoor/binkd hybrid setup... we
use fileboxes for all binkd links and a glue program or two to move things
from the AM/FA outbound to the fileboxes... inbound is all scripted in
4DOS/4OS2 .bat file stuff... even checking BSO busy flags and the like...
there is a way to have frontdoor use fileboxes directly with its static
queue but i don't use that right now... i don't recall if fastecho
understands FD's static queue to that level and would know to place a
system's outbound mail in its filebox as indicated by the STQ... what i've
got works but it is a real PITA to add a new system because of the various
config files that have to be adjusted... missing one breaks things in an
ugly way...

 ml>> BSO is more primitive than the other formats used by FA mailers...

 MB> Older yes.... primitive?  Not so sure.  I never felt limited by what I
 MB> could do with it.

definitely primitive... there's a difference between being primitive and
limited... but there are limits to BSO... it is where the max zone number
of 4095 comes from... with 8.3 limitations, the zone of the outbound can
only go up to 0xfff ;) aside from that, BSO is pretty well defined and
quite capable... AM/FA changed things slightly in that they automaticall
handle packing and routing of netmail offering dynamic routing capabilities
whereas BSO is lovingly know as "black hole" because the tosser
has to pack everything and any rerouting changes mean that those packed
messages have to be unpacked and repacked to the new destination if the
current mailer event adjusts the routing... knowing what message(s) is in
which PKT(s) destined to which system(s) to validate proper routing is much
harder with BSO... AM/FA also allows for one single outbound instead of
multiple ones... AM/FA mailers are simply a more intelligent mailer...
nothing wrong with either...

)\/(ark

...  Oh! Ms. Co-Moderator!
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